Turning Point
by Darthanne
Summary: Megabyte Damon learns that he is the last one in the Damon household to learn about his family's move to a quaint little town called Sunnydale.


Turning Point

By Anne Olsen

Author's notes

This story is 'Episode' 1SLM003 in the Shadows and Light Meridian series. For more information about Shadows and Light please check out the website at http://www.alternate-realities.net/shadowsnlight or http://clik.to/shadowsnlight 

Thanks to Kristin (Amethyst Maiden) for the beta read and to John and Michele for their suggestions and input.

Disclaimer

The characters of Megabyte, Millie and Bill Damon don't belong to me. Neither do Adam Newman, Ami Jackson, Kevin Wilson, Jade Weston or Caroline Damon (who appear in name only). They belong to Roger Damon Price, Thames/Tetra and ITV Television.

Feeback to anneo@paradise.net.nz

******

"What's that you're looking at Millie?" Megabyte Damon came up behind his younger sister and peered over her shoulder. Millie rose to her feet, drawing herself up to her full height, which was still a good few inches shorter than her brother and glared at him, annoyance showing in her blue eyes. Both redheads faced each other for a moment, then Millie poked out her tongue. 

"None of your business," she retorted. "You'll find out soon enough." Millie snatched the brochure she was reading and hid it behind her back, so that her brother couldn't see it.

"Are you daring me to come and get it?"

"What if I am? Come on, what are you going to do to me?" Millie danced around the room, trying to keep a couple of steps ahead of Megabyte.

She squealed as he pounced on her, and held her down. "So what are you going to do, Marmaduke?" Millie grinned as the use of his given name gave her the effect she was after.

"Think that's funny do you Millicent?" One thing the Damon siblings did have in common were parents who seemed to believe in torturing their children with the names they chose for them. 

"You haven't answered my question yet. After all it's not as though you can kill me or anything, is it?"

"Hey there's more to being a Tomorrow Person than not being able to kill, remember?" Megabyte grinned, and concentrated. The brochure Millie had put down behind her moved through the air and landed in his hand.

"Hey that's not fair!"

"Live with it," came the retort. "You were the one that brought the whole TP thing into the conversation remember?"

Megabyte looked over the glossy photo on the cover of the booklet he was holding. "Welcome to Sunnydale, California," he read out loud. "Hey Millie, thinking of moving? I'll really miss you. Not."

Millie looked up at him, a 'I know something you don't' look on her face. "Haven't Dad and Mom told you yet?"

"Told me what?" 

"You're moving too. We all are, the whole family." Millie saw the expression on her brother's face and grinned. "You don't know, do you?"

"Moving? You are kidding me, right?" Megabyte frowned. "Why would they tell you and not me?"

"Might have something to do with the fact you're never here." Millie looked up at Megabyte to see his reaction to her latest comment, and saw instead a flash of bright light as he teleported and left the room.

"Millie one, Megabyte zero," she noted to herself with satisfaction. Even though her brother was a Tomorrow Person, and she wasn't, it certainly didn't interfere with the number of arguments she still managed to win. In fact her knowledge of what he was had been handy in getting him to do a few things for her in return for her not telling their mother. That was, of course until their mother had found out anyway.

Millie grinned at the memory of her mom's reaction to that piece of news, as she wandered towards the kitchen. As she passed her father's study, she heard raised voices. Okay, now at least she knew where Megabyte had gone when he had disappeared. She paused by the door, wondering whether to do a bit of eavesdropping and decided against it. Judging by what was being said, it was time to do some disappearing of her own…

****************

Megabyte materialised in front of his father's desk, waving the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' brochure in his hand.

General William Damon looked down at the coffee he'd spilled over his desk and sighed, reaching for the cloth his wife had insisted he keep in his bottom drawer. At least these days he didn't have to keep coming up with excuses for why he was so accident prone. "Don't you ever knock?" he complained. "Some people in this house would like it if you used the front door and entered rooms the traditional way you know."

"Well Mom's not here, is she?" Megabyte still remembered all too well the lecture he and his dad had got from his mom when she had accidentally found out about his powers and the Tomorrow People. An erupting volcano had nothing on Caroline Damon when she had found out how long they had kept the information from her. 

"It doesn't mean you shouldn't respect her rules though, does it?"

Megabyte decided there was no way he was going down that road, or get his father started on it either.

"So when were you going to tell me about this?" He demanded. The redhead threw the brochure down on his father's desk, narrowly missing landing it in the puddle of upset coffee as he did so.

Damon looked closely at the paper in front of him. "Sunnydale," he commented. "Oh yes, that."

"Yeah, that. The fact that Millie seems to think we're moving and I don't know anything about it. That."

"Well, for starters, I seem to remember you promising to be here for dinner one night last week and you never showed."

"I was busy, okay?" 

"Too busy to spend time with your family and bother to find out that things were happening to other members of this household besides yourself you mean?"

Megabyte opened his mouth to reply to his father's accusation and stopped himself just in time. He didn't think the comment 'well I was planning to be here but that's the night Ami went missing and got soul bonded to a vampire' would go down particularly well with his dad at the moment.

"I told you I was busy," he repeated. Geez that sounds lame. If I was Dad, I wouldn't buy it either.

General Damon continued, mentally translating what his son had just said. "In other words you were somewhere you shouldn't probably getting into trouble as usual. Your mother worries since she found out about you being a Tomorrow Person, you know. It wouldn't hurt you to touch base once in a while and let her know what's going on."

"Yeah right, and what about all those years she was never home?" Megabyte retorted. "She finds out I'm a Tomorrow Person and suddenly she's all concerned about my whereabouts…"

His father cut him off before he could say anything else. "Well she knows now and she's trying to make up for all the time she wasn't here. Be fair, Megabyte, she's been hit with quite a shock here. It's not everyday you find out that your son can teleport and has these powers because he suddenly appears out of thin air in front of you."

"That wasn't my fault. I mean how was I to know she was in your office talking to you when I teleported in. Beats me why she picked that day, of all days to decide to be home. She's *never * home. Besides," he continued. " She hasn't said much to me."

Damon looked over at the sofa in his office and back at his son. "No she hasn't said much to *you *"

Doing time on the sofa again? Yeah that sounds right, thought Megabyte to himself. Typical Mom reaction. Spends the first couple of days worrying, and doing her whole Terminator on the warpath imitation, and then goes back to the 'he'll grow out of it if I ignore it' attitude she'd taken with everything else that had ever happened with Millie and himself. She'd been the same way when he'd started getting into computers he remembered. Though of course that was fairly harmless, at least from her point of view. Lucky for him, he supposed she didn't know the full scope of what exactly he had been up to hacking wise lately. Must get back into that Gate program sometime soon too.

"Megabyte are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

Damon's question shook Megabyte out of his reverie. "Yeah sure Dad. Er….what did you say again?"

"I said this move will be good for the whole family. Your Mom is hoping to get a position at Sunnydale U and…"

"Yeah right. If we have to go back to the States, why can't we move back to Vermont? After all I have friends there, and what about all the friends I have here?"

Damon sighed. "Right Marmaduke." He ticked off the names of Megabyte's closest friends on his hand. "Adam, Ami, Kevin and Jade. Spot the connection?"

"Connection?" Megabyte could see where his dad was going and decided to play dumb.

"They're all Tomorrow People like you. They can teleport like you. What's it going to matter where you live? They're still going to drag you into trouble. Or should that be you dragging them into trouble? These days I'm never sure."

"Hey," Megabyte opened his mouth to protest. "A teenager is supposed to be able to hang out with his friends and get into trouble. That's part of the deal."

"Not when that deal involves all the danger that you kids seem to get yourselves into, it doesn't. I'm hoping that this move to Sunnydale will stop a lot of this. After all according to what I've heard, it's a nice quiet town where nothing much happens. Not like London, where you guys seem to make a habit of stumbling across mad scientists and the like every five minutes."

"Quiet and boring you mean? Give me a break, Dad." Megabyte ran his eyes over the brochures he'd thrown on the desk. "One nightclub, one movie theatre. C'mon it's a nowhere town in California. What are you trying to do to me here?" 

Damon smiled and Megabyte groaned to himself. Whenever his dad had that look it usually meant he wouldn't like what was coming.

"Well for one thing, you mother and I thought you could take some classes at Sunnydale U. We weren't very impressed with the last year you spent at school. Sometimes you have to put in some effort to get somewhere in life you know."

"If you mean work all day and night so that your kids never see you, you've got that right," Megabyte muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Dad, nothing. It wasn't my fault my grades slipped. I was sorta busy with Tomorrow People stuff. Someone's gotta do the whole saving the world thing." Megabyte could see his dad wasn't buying it. He tried another track, flipping through the brochure for more ammo.

"Look at the number of cemeteries in this place. Hey maybe all the other parents are wiping their kids out with boredom and study, like you're planning to do to me." He shrugged. "Hey Dad, be reasonable. I can't do everything. Other kids don't have the whole TP gig to deal with remember?"

"Adam manages to do both. He was showing me some of the courses he was going to take at Sydney University this semester. If he can make the effort, I can't see why you can't."

"Well, I'm not Adam, okay. And he doesn't have you expecting him to live up to your standards all the time." Megabyte regretted the comment as soon as it was out of his mouth. Still it served his dad right. He wasn't Adam and he was never going to be. At least not in this lifetime.

"Besides," he continued. "You've only really started taking an interest in my welfare since I became a Tomorrow Person. Remember last year when I disappeared for three days? How long did it take you to notice I'd gone? One day, maybe two?"

"That's not a fair comment and you know it. It's not my fault if my job takes me out of the country and something happens to you while I'm gone. I know I've made some mistakes in the past Megabyte, but we're talking about now. We've had this conversation before, remember?" Damon didn't look very impressed with his son's last comment. 

"Yeah right Dad. I'm trying to be a good parent now, yadda, yadda, yadda. I've heard it all before, okay."

"It's still true Megabyte. Both for me and for your mother."

Megabyte snorted. "Yeah right Dad. It might be nice if you just let me know what's going on round here for a change."

"Well it might be nice if you're actually around to tell for a change. I seem to remember telling you to stay home the Saturday before last too. What happened to that promise? Don't you think it's about time you started listening to me and your mom and staying home occasionally?"

"I had things I had to do." Megabyte rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me, you're going to try and ground me now? I'd like to see you try." He stood up and looked his father straight in the eye. 

"I didn't say that, but now you mention it…"

"Yeah right Dad. That's your answer to everything isn't it? You do something I don't like and you make like it's my fault."

"Megabyte…"

Megabyte threw up his arms in disgust. "I give up. There's no talking to you is there?"

"Megabyte…" his father started to say again. "Don't be childish."

"Yeah right Dad." Megabyte picked up the Sunnydale brochure off the desk and headed for the door. "Looks as though I'd better go read up about this hell hole of boredom you're making me move to." He headed towards the door, and suddenly grinned. "Oh yeah, about that whole grounding thing?"

As he initiated the teleport Megabyte noted with satisfaction the look on his father's face as he vanished. Parents!

******

~Fin~


End file.
